Aeromexico is seeking a collective agreement of the Association of Flight Attendants Union (ASSA) that delivers a 10-15% reduction in benefits to new workers (epsiloninfo.com, 04-Feb-2011). The airline, which reached an amended collective agreement with its pilots in Dec-2010 to raise productivity, currently employs 1,400 flight attendants. Grupo Aeromexico airlines transported 11.6 million passengers during 2010 on its national and international routes, including scheduled and charter services. This represents a 12% increase year-on-year. The breakdown was as follows:

Aeromexico: 6.5 million passengers, +8%, including 4.2 million domestic passengers;

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After losing the competition to acquire a majority stake in TAP Portugal during 2015, the South American conglomerate Synergy Group has turned its attention to Argentina and Mexico – two of Latin America’s most promising markets. Mexico’s domestic passenger growth continues at a steady rate, and a more liberalised era ushered in by Argentina’s new government is opening up the country’s domestic and international markets to new competitors.

Synergy is taking a sizeable stake in the Mexican regional airline Aeromar, a small player in the country’s aviation market compared with the fast-growing low cost airlines that have grown rapidly during the last few years. Synergy decided to outline plans for its stake in Aeromar just as the US presidential election casts a cloud over the Mexican market due to president-elect Trump’s protectionist rhetoric during his campaign.

Synergy’s moves in Argentina and Mexico are occurring as Avianca Holdings searches for a strategic investor and foreign entities line up to invest in Latin American airlines. For now, Synergy remains Avianca’s largest shareholder.

Pilot strikes at Lufthansa. Again. A strike ballot among British Airways cabin crew. A guilty verdict for Air France workers who assaulted an executive during a union protest. These were all headlines in late Nov-2016, following Air France pilot and cabin crew strikes in summer 2016. Labour relations at Europe's three biggest legacy airline groups are an ongoing challenge.

A CAPA report in Jun-2016 highlighted the growing number of articles on CAPA's website mentioning the word 'strike'. It raised the possibility that if the rate continued through the year, 2016 could be the biggest year for strike-related articles since before the global financial crisis. With a little under a month still to go, this year has already comfortably passed this milestone.

To a large extent labour unrest grows as airline industry profits increase. However, rather than hoping for an industry downturn to reverse the rise in the cycle of strikes, airline CEOs are talking tough – a line long taken by IAG's Willie Walsh. Lufthansa's Carsten Spohr has said that taking on the pilots is "about the future of Lufthansa", noting that it has “no chance of survival" if it gives in to pay demands (Bloomberg, 24-Nov-2016).